by Piper Scott
“There isn’t very much to tell, Sir.” Gabriel undid his seatbelt, but waited for permission before opening the door. Until he knew exactly how hard Sir intended to be on him, he would not push his limits.
Sir had turned at the hip to face him, one arm rested on top of the steering wheel. He lifted a brow in a playful way and let the beginning of a grin lift the corner of his lips. It was a charming look, but no matter how it made Gabriel feel, he reminded himself that his time with Sir was only temporary. Temptation would not win. “Then tell you what… I want you to lie to me.”
“L-lie?” Gabriel stared holes through the thighs of his jeans, not sure whether to be alarmed or excited.
“Yup. Lie to me.” Sir swung the car door open and stepped out. He bent at the waist to look in at Gabriel, and Gabriel tried not to think about the kindness in Sir’s green eyes. “Come up with another life for yourself. Imagine you’re… I don’t know. Imagine you’re Adrian. Pretend that you have all his likes and dislikes, and then tell me what you like.”
“Oh.” Gabriel tried to hold back a laugh, but he was only partially successful—it slipped into his words as he replied. “Adrian doesn’t like anything or anyone, except for maybe me, and Sterling, and Lilian.”
“Shit, you’re right. Bad example.” Sir stepped back and set his hand on the car door, like he was getting ready to close it. “I guess you’ll just have to pretend that you’re someone else—someone that you know. Can you think of anyone?”
“Yes, Sir,” Gabriel said with a nod.
“Then come on out and help me unpack. I want to get you settled before it gets too late. We don’t have much daylight left.”
Was that permission to leave the car? Gabriel thought so. He set his hand on the handle, glanced at Sir to make sure he was doing the right thing, then swung the door open. Once he’d exited the vehicle, he closed the door as politely as he could and followed Sir to the trunk. It had already been popped, and Sir eased it open with a single hand.
It occurred to Gabriel that he was expected to talk, but he had no idea who to talk about. The friends he’d kept at The White Lotus hadn’t been the kind he’d spent much time getting to know on a personal level, and the individuals he’d met at Stonecrest he hadn’t paid much attention to. The only person Gabriel knew was Garrison, but what was it that Garrison liked? Gabriel thought he should know, but he couldn’t come up with anything.
Sir hefted his duffel bag from the trunk and tucked it over his shoulder. It was heavy, but he made it look feather light. Gabriel examined him for a moment, then remembered himself and looked away. “I… I like to have sex.”
Sir almost dropped the duffel bag. “Excuse me?”
Molten lava didn’t compare to the heat that radiated from Gabriel’s cheeks. “You asked me to pretend to be someone else, Sir.”
“Right.” Sir adjusted the bag on his shoulder and rubbed his mouth. “I did. Keep going. You just took me by surprise, is all.”
Was there a hint of color in Sir’s cheeks? Gabriel picked up his backpack from where it had been laid in the trunk and swung it over his shoulder. “And I like to meet new people. In fact, I know so many people that sometimes I don’t even remember their names.”
Sir shut the trunk. The heavy thunk startled Gabriel, and he took a few steps back for safety.
“How many people do you know?” Sir led the way to the cheerful white door.
Gabriel followed. “I don’t know… seventy-five, maybe? Probably more.”
“You must be popular, then.” Sir slotted a key into the lock. With a turn of his wrist, it clicked, and he pushed the door open. “Are they all your friends?”
“No.” Gabriel didn’t want to play this game anymore. He didn’t want to think about who those people were to Garrison.
“If they’re not your friends, then who are they?”
Gabriel came to a stop in the carport. He knew that he should follow Sir through the door and obey his command, but he couldn’t. His mind spun, remembering the sleepless nights when Garrison left him alone in bed, and the times he’d walked into Garrison’s office to find other boys sitting on his lap.
All because Gabriel wasn’t attractive enough, exciting enough, or engaging enough.
Garrison’s favorite, Seth, and the way Garrison had made eyes at him. The lust in his eyes when he took Seth’s heat was never the same as when he was with Gabriel. But Garrison had promised that they’d make a family. He’d told Gabriel that he loved him.
“Gabriel?”
Words betrayed him. Gabriel’s vocal cords clamped, and his jaw locked. He backed away from the door, only stopping when his thighs smacked the side of the car. His backpack squished, caught between his weight and the vehicle, but he couldn’t bring himself to worry about whether his toiletries leaked or not. The whole world was closing in on him, and as it did, it pushed the air out of Gabriel’s lungs and left him struggling to breathe.
“Gabriel.” Sir stepped down from the stoop and crossed the carport, but Gabriel couldn’t bring himself to face him. Sir would be angry he disobeyed. He would punish Gabriel for falling short of expectation, and then he would force Gabriel to tell him what he didn’t want to say. “Hey. What’s going on with you?”
Gabriel’s gaze darted to the side. The carport was tidy, and the driveway was a straight shot to the road. Across the street was the preserve and all the beautiful trees with their green and orange and red leaves. If he could make it—
Sir came too close, and Gabriel knew he didn’t have time to plan anymore. He bolted from the car and ran for the street. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, but he couldn’t be good like he’d thought he would be able to. He’d thought Sir would want to use his body, but otherwise leave him be. Clearly, that wasn’t the case, and Gabriel couldn’t handle it.
He couldn’t take kindness from a stranger when he’d never been offered it by the man he loved.
A shout of surprise pierced his eardrums, but Gabriel drowned it out beneath the sound of his canvas shoes striking the asphalt. He made it to the sidewalk when a slow-moving car brought him to a sudden stop. Its windows were heavily tinted, but the driver’s side window was rolled down, and the man inside stared at Gabriel as he drove by.
Gabriel stared back.
He knew that face and the twisted, smug expression on it. He could almost smell the leather and wood on the air.
And the rot.
He didn’t want to run anymore.
9
Cedric
Instinct consumed him, and Cedric ran. The duffel bag slapped against his side with every impact of his shoe against the asphalt, and his lungs and muscles screamed in protest for going from zero to sixty on the drop of a dime, but Cedric ignored them. There was no other alternative.
He would not lose Gabriel.
Gabriel came to a sudden stop on the edge of the sidewalk, halted by a slow-moving car that passed on the other side of the street. Cedric didn’t waste the opportunity. He seized Gabriel by the shoulder and spun him around with more force than he needed to—Gabriel’s body was unexpectedly pliant. The dazed expression on his face and the looseness in his limbs spoke for him—he wasn’t planning on running anymore.
“What are you doing?” Cedric demanded. He was out of breath, but he did his best to hide it from his voice. Now more than ever, he needed to be a source of strength. “Gabriel!”
Gabriel’s eyes were distant, like his body was still on Earth, but his mind was lost somewhere in the cosmos. He was pale by nature, but the kind of pale he was in that moment wasn’t healthy. Cedric tightened his hand and resisted the urge to shake him. What the hell was he thinking? “Gabriel!”
“I’m on the sidewalk,” Gabriel murmured, unprovoked. “On the sidewalk in front of a bungalow across from a forest.”
“No.” Cedric’s hands left Gabriel’s shoulders. He cupped his face instead, forcing Gabriel to look at him. “You’re home.”
Gabriel blinked a few times,
and the light came back to his eyes. A sadness softened his features, like he’d lost all hope. Then, like he was guilty of a crime Cedric didn’t understand, he lowered his gaze and let his shoulders droop. The deflation brought Cedric down from his fear. He ran one thumb over Gabriel’s cheek to soothe him, then dropped his hands and swept Gabriel up into a tight hug. Gabriel squeaked. He was trembling. The movement was imperceptible to the eye, but impossible to miss when he was pressed tight against Cedric’s chest.
“I’m sorry, Sir,” Gabriel whispered. The sound was so small that it was almost entirely absorbed by the cotton of Cedric’s shirt. “That was wrong of me to do.”
“Yeah, it was.” Cedric didn’t let him go. Until his pulse slowed and his fear waned, he needed to know that Gabriel wasn’t going anywhere. “You know there will be consequences, right?”
“I do.”
“Then let’s go inside, okay?” Cedric looked over Gabriel’s shoulder at the street, now empty. What the hell had just happened? It bothered him that he might never know. “We’ll put your belongings away, and then we’ll talk about what just happened, and what you’re going to do to fix it.”
There was no verbal response, but Gabriel nodded against his chest. He didn’t cling to Cedric—he didn’t even hug him—but Cedric got the feeling that without physical contact, Gabriel would fall apart. No matter how stressed Cedric was from what had just transpired, he needed to push past his burdensome fear in order to put Gabriel first. As wired as Cedric was, Gabriel was in a place a thousand times worse. The glossed-over look in his eyes wasn’t normal. It was like Gabriel had lost himself amongst the wreckage of his past, and what remained was fragmented in such a way that it needed an external source to hold it together.
Cedric was that source.
With a deep, grounding breath and slow, purposeful movements, Cedric ended the hug.
He took Gabriel home.
10
Gabriel
Through the cheerful white door was an eat-in kitchen. The wooden floor was glossy and the baseboards were neat, white trim against stone-gray painted walls. Gabriel accompanied Sir through the kitchen and into the living room, remarking upon the double glass doors leading out into a screened-in sun room—but the stunning layout and the pristine condition of the building did not distract him from his troubles. Not even Sir’s hand, broad and confident on the small of his back, was enough to make him forget.
The man without a name was outside. He’d looked Gabriel in the eyes, and he’d smiled that cruel, twisted smile that made Gabriel feel dirty all over. It was the kind of smile that said, I’ve found you, and that scared Gabriel more than the thought of never being with Garrison again.
There was nothing good about the man without a name. He’d taken Gabriel from The White Lotus and demanded Gabriel be his when it was obvious Gabriel still belonged to Garrison. Those times had been so dark that Gabriel had mostly blocked them out, but he still remembered what the man without a name looked like.
He saw him in his nightmares every time he closed his eyes.
If the man without a name knew where he was, Gabriel needed to act fast. The longer he stayed in this place, the more likely it was that he would be in danger. The last thing he wanted was to go back with him, locked up and imprisoned, degraded and abused. This time, there would be no escape. The man without a name wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, and Gabriel would be stuck forever.
That couldn’t happen.
Sir brought Gabriel through the house to a bedroom. The space was small, and it was a little musty, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. The single bed was the focal point of the room, a dust sheet drawn over it to keep it pristine. The wood floor looked recently polished, and the old wood dresser pushed against the wall was dust-free. A door at the back of the room, not far from the bed, led out to the screened-in sun room. A thick curtain was hung above it, drawn to the side for the moment so that the dying light of day could illuminate the room.
Sir dropped the duffel bag on the dust sheet, then turned to face Gabriel. Gabriel set his backpack on the floor by the door and lowered his head as a sign of submission.
“This is your room,” Sir explained. He gestured to the bed. “This is where you will sleep.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Generally, you will have free run of the house, except for my bedroom. You will be able to take what you want from the fridge and from the freezer. You may help yourself to the glasses in the cabinet and to any plates and silverware you find, but you will make sure that whatever you use is cleaned and returned to where you found it once you’ve finished with it.”
“Yes, Sir.” Gabriel glanced at the glass door leading to the sun room. Each of the panels sparkled in the setting sun, so clean that he would have thought they weren’t there if it hadn’t been for the way they shone.
“When you are in good standing, you are also permitted to use the television and any electronics you want. If you aren’t sure how to work something, you need to ask me. Do not attempt to figure it out on your own.”
“Yes, Sir.” Gabriel paused, and something curious curled inside of him until it was wound so tight he had to let it spring from his lips. “You said in good standing, Sir. Does that mean that I’m not allowed to use those things right now?”
“Not now. You’ve been bad, Gabriel. You will not run from me again.”
Gabriel glanced off to the side and folded his arms across his chest uneasily, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The punishment didn’t fit the crime. If all Sir was doing was taking away his television privileges, he was lucky. During his time at The White Lotus, he hadn’t been allowed to watch television at all, and he’d only caught glimpses of the odd program here and there when the man without a name demanded his presence in the living room. Sir should have taken away something precious to punish him—his blankets, or his bed, or his clothes. Losing access to electronics didn’t make Gabriel feel like he was being punished at all.
“You are not to leave the house under any circumstance unless I have given you permission.” Sir closed some of the distance between them, and Gabriel looked up curiously through his lashes as he did. He didn’t dare lift his chin. “You will be in bed by no later than eleven every night, and up before nine every day.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And Gabriel?” Sir stood before him now, and Gabriel glanced back down at the floor. He observed the toes of Sir’s shoes and focused on his breathing.
“Yes, Sir?”
Sir reached out. He curled a finger under Gabriel’s chin and lifted his head until they gazed into each other’s eyes. Gabriel’s heart pounded against his ribcage in a desperate bid to escape, but for once, Gabriel didn’t feel like running for safer ground. The way his heart beat wasn’t bad. It was…
His eyes lidded, and he nuzzled against Sir’s hand as warmth spread through him. The first touches of arousal swirled low and swept him up, and he parted his lips as though he was expecting a kiss. The air he breathed sparked in his lungs, and Gabriel fought against the urge to reach out and touch Sir in the sensual ways that he knew would make them both feel good.
Touching a man wasn’t supposed to feel this way. It had never been like this before—not even with Garrison. Sir had to be playing some kind of trick in order to make Gabriel want to stay. If that was the case, Gabriel didn’t mind—at least not for right now. Touch was good. Touch was nice. After the encounter he’d just had on the street, he needed to feel someone else there.
Through partially lidded eyes, he watched Sir’s lips part. The tiny metal balls beneath them shone in the light. When he spoke, the sound of his voice was soothing in a way Gabriel had never heard before, and his words danced upon Gabriel’s lips. “I want you to speak freely. I want you to be able to express what’s on your mind.”
Gabriel didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing at all. Instead, he closed his eyes and let the weight of Sir’s hand beneath his chin lull him into a sense of security.
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He’d done a bad thing by running away, but Sir wasn’t punishing him. Not really. Television was a privilege, not a right, and Gabriel was much more used to having his rights removed than anything else. But Sir hadn’t lifted a hand against him in anger, and not once had he raised his voice. If anything, Gabriel felt rewarded. Sir’s touch was a treat, and he indulged in it for as long as he was willing to share it.
“Is that all, Sir?” Gabriel asked. He knew he couldn’t let silence stretch between them forever, as much as he wanted it to. If he never moved, and if he never spoke, maybe Sir would never stop touching him. What would it be like to feel this good forever?
“For now, yes.” Sir’s hand dropped, and the spell he’d cast over Gabriel came to an end. Gabriel’s rapidly beating heart slowed back to normal, and the tingling in his lungs stopped. He tucked his hands behind his back and lowered his gaze, but did not lower his head.
“Since you have nothing else to do, I’d like you to come with me to the kitchen so we can make dinner together.”
“Cooking?” Gabriel let a smile stretch his lips, and he looked up at Sir timidly, still expecting that at any second, Sir might change his mind and punish Gabriel for his disobedience. “Really?”
“Well, we’ve got to eat, don’t we?”
“I love cooking.”
Sir caught his eye and smiled back, and Gabriel’s insides did a strange flip, the kind he’d sometimes experienced as a child when he’d ridden his bike far too fast down a hill. Flustered, he looked away.
“Is that the real you speaking, or whoever you’re pretending to be?”
“It’s me,” Gabriel whispered, shy to admit it. He knew that he could have lied and that Sir never would have known any better, but doing that felt cheap. Sir had been nice to Gabriel when Gabriel had deserved his wrath, and so Gabriel thought it would be good of him to be nice to Sir in return. It didn’t mean that he was betraying Garrison… not really. Not at all. One day soon, he’d plan his escape, but until then, there was no point in starving himself of what felt nice. And Sir? Sir felt nice. “I love cooking. It used to be something I’d do when I was… away.”